Disaggregation by Gender and Age

This indicator shows the extent to which a project’s monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) activities disaggregate the collected data by gender and age. It indicates the extent to which project teams are enabled to understand the situation of specific sections of the target population.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) List all relevant monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) activities occurring within the given project / programme. In the context of this indicator, “relevant” means that disaggregating data by gender / age is useful for such an activity.

2) Define when a relevant MEAL activity can be considered “disaggregating data by gender and age”. For example, do all data need to be disaggregated? Or only some data? Similarly, decide on whether all data must always be disaggregated by gender and age or whether, in some cases, it is sufficient to have it disaggregated by gender or age only. Avoid being overly ambitious - disaggregating all the data might not be necessary. 

3) Review the reports where the data collected by these activities is presented. Count the number of reports that disaggregated data by age / gender, following the criteria you defined in point 2.

4) To determine the indicator’s value, divide the number of relevant MEAL activities that disaggregated data by gender / age by the total number of relevant MEAL activities. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.

Disaggregate data by the type of data collection activities.

1) A project’s monitoring system should regularly record which MEAL activities took place and the extent to which they disaggregated data by gender and age – i.e. whether it was in line with the requirements defined in point 1. Such records will make it much easier to determine an indicator’s value (as opposed to doing everything at the end of the project only).  

2) A more basic version of this indicator could be “% of project indicators with data disaggregated by gender and age group (where relevant)”. Its advantage is that it is much easier to determine its value. Its disadvantage is that it covers only a portion of the data collected by MEAL activities.